Tecumseh's parents were Puckshinwa, the leader of a band of Kispoko Shawnee. Some oral histories suggest that Puckshinwa's father was Muscogee Creek and his mother Shawnee, although it could have been the other way around. His mother was Methotaske, who may also have had Creek or Cherokee ancestry. As with many of these Native leaders, rumors of European ancestry have cropped up. Methotaske's great-grandfather was Straight Tail Meaurroway Opessa, whom as we have seen had a family connection to Pierre and Martin Chartier. Family connection doesn't always mean straight descent, so it's likely that Tecumseh was full-blooded Native though an admixture of tribes. Uncertain exists about his birthplace. The Shawnee migrated widely in search of hunting territory. At the time of their marriage, Puckshinwa and Methotaske may have been living near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which would make Tecumseh share a birth state with Osceola. Or, they may have migrated to near where Chillicothe, Ohio, which means he would have shared Ohio as a birth state with Joseph Brant. The Shawnee reckoned descent from the father's side of the family and Tecumseh had a heritage to live up to. His father, though considered a minor war chief, was still a renowned warrior, as was his oldest son Cheeseekau. Their sister, Tecumpease married a warrior named Wasegoboah. After Pukshinwa's death at the Battle of Point Pleasant in October, 1774, Cheeseekau and Wasegoboah would take Tecumseh under their care and provide his warrior's training. He joined his first war party at age 15 in 1783, working with other Shawnee to stop flatboats traveling down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania. During this period of life, Tecumseh came to understand the wrath of the White men. The Shawnee sided with the British during the Revolution and the family had to flee four different villages destroyed by American punitive raids, Chillicothe itself destroyed in 1779 by George Rogers Clark, another village burned by Clark in 1780, Clark again in 1782 at a village near Standing Rock.
There would be plenty of fighting for a young warrior in the years of the Northwest War (1785-1795). Tecumseh accompanied Cheeseekau as he joined forces with Dragging Canoe's Chickamauga Cherokee, getting an opportunity to see another great Native leader at work. Cheeseekau was killed in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and Tecumseh refused to sign the Treaty of Greenville of 1795. He settled in Greenville, Ohio, where his younger brother Lalewithika lived. Lalewithika had washed out as a warrior. Wounded in the eye with a bow at an early age, plague by inferiority and insecurity, he had turned to drinking. While the rest of the family was fed up with his drunken scrapes and bragging mouth, Tecumseh had always been kind to him. While Tecumseh was staying wit him, Lalewithika drunk himself into a stupor and fell into a fire in that state. He spent several days in a coma and the family weren't sure if he would survive. When he came to, he told Tecumseh of his spirit visions. The old warriors would return, as would the game, if the Shawnee would reject that White man's ways, including alcohol, return to traditional ways of life and drive the White man out of Native lands. Whether he honestly believed his brother's message or was just relieved that Laewithika, who became better known as Tenskwatawa had found a better way and an impetus to stay off alcohol isn't known. 
As Tenskwatawa preached his message and people of the Shawnee and other tribes flocked to his village, tensions with other Native leaders and neighboring Whites increased. Tecumseh tried to assure Indian Agent William Wells that his people intended to follow their new found faith and remain at peace, but had decided to remove further away from contact with Settlers. Tenskwatawa chose an area where the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers meet, near present-day Battleground, Indiana, which he named Prophetstown. Tecumseh realized he had an opportunity to encourage the tribes to join forces and drive the Settlers out of the Ohio Valley, at least. While Tenskwatawa remained in control at Prophetstown, Tecumseh traveled throughout the region, trying to rally the tribes to his cause. He spoke to leaders in the Red Stick Creek town of Tallasee, where a young mixed-race boy named Billy Powell might have been in the audience gathered in the town square to hear him. While members of many tribes joined the growing movement at Prophetstown, others did not, or used the Prophetstown model to found their own movements, then or later.Eventually, Tecumseh would have to reckon with White authority in the form of Indiana's military governor William Henry Harrison. Harrison had been successful in urging or threatening many Native leaders into signing treaties ceding more land to White settlement, which angered Tecumseh. He believed, as Brant had before him, that Native land was held in common, with no one leader having authority to sell it or cede it. As he worked against Harrison, trying to keep leaders from signing or urging them to repudiate the treaties, Harrison decided it was time to have a face-to-face meeting with Tecumseh. They had two meetings at Grouseland, Harrison's country estate, and neither of them went well. Tecumseh insisted on bringing armed warriors to both meetings in 1810 and 1811, which made the townspeople nervous. The two men engaged in passionate arguments for their side, each time, with little results. At one point, Tecumseh ordered his warriors to move against Harrison, who drew his sword. A Potawatomi leader named Winnemac stepped forward and talked both sides down before Tecumseh and his warriors left.
Following the confrontation with Harrison, Tecumseh knew that he and his allies would need to be prepared for war. He traveled South again, hoping to rouse the Five Southeastern tribes. He had given orders to Tenskwatawa that if Harrison moved on Prophetstown, that the town was to be evacuated. While Tecumseh was away, a comet appeared in the sky in 1811. As Tecumseh's name could also mean Shooting Star, the Creeks took it as an omen of his coming, though they did not join his cause. Tenskwatawa and other Shawnee at Prophetstown took it as an omen of luck. As he left Creek country after a dispute with Choctaw leader Pushmataha, Tecumseh predicted that the Southeastern tribes would see he was right when he gave them a sign.
Meanwhile, on September 26, 1811, Harrison marched over 1,000 men from Vincennes toward Tippecanoe. Perhaps emboldened by the supernatural events, Tenkswatawa claimed another vision indicating that he was to fight the enemy in direct contravention of Tecumseh's instructions. The allied tribes attacked Harrison on November 7, 1811, in what became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison's men held their ground and fought the Natives off. The Natives abandoned Prophetstown and began to flee, as members of various tribes and bands lost faith and departed for their homelands. Tecumseh returned to see Harrison in control, the town in ruins, his confederacy shattered, and his own people ready to kill Tenskwatawa as a false prophet. He intervened and banished his brother instead. In December, 1811, the New Madrid Quake rattled the area. Various tribes interpreted the omen that Tecumseh's efforts had to be supported, but the War of 1812 intervened.
Tecumseh took what remained of his people to Canada, allying his warriors with the British, who were invading the Northwest Territories from Upper Canada, now Ontario. He participated under British General Isaac Brock in the Siege of Detroit in August, 1812. The British wanted to honor Tecumseh with the present of a sash and a commission in the British Army. He refused the commission and gave the sash away to someone, possibly Isaac Brock, who was wearing it at his own death at Queenstown Heights a year later. Meanwhile, Harrison invaded upper Canada. During the siege of Fort Meigs, when Natives began killing American prisoners, Tecumseh stepped in to stop it. The once terror of the Northwest Territory now became a household hero in America. Although he had enjoyed good relations with Isaac Brock, tensions between Tecumseh and the next British commander, Henry Procter, were strained. On October 5, 1813, the Americans attacked and defeated the British at the Battle of the Thames. Sources differ as to how and when Tecumseh died, though many politicians later included on their personal and political resumes the honor of having been the one to have killed him.
The most likely scenario is that Tecumseh was wounded during the Battle and managed to leave the field on his own power. He was later seen by a mixed-race Potawatomi named Billy Caldwell, of whom more later, whom Tecumseh told that he had been shot. If this version is true, friends probably carried Tecumseh to a place where he could die privately and be buried without a trace. He and his warriors would have been aware of the American desire to claim bragging rights for killing him and perhaps mutilate his body as a trophy. Indeed, American burial parties combed the field, having heard that Tecumseh was shot and looking for the body. Tradition holds that Simon Kenton, to satisfy them, misidentified another dead warrior as Tecumseh so that they could take their trophies from that corpse and would leave Tecumseh in peace. Today, no one knows where he is buried except somewhere near the battlefield in Chatham-Kent, Ontario. During negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812, the British tried to float a proposal requiring Americans to return to the Natives portions of Ohio, Indiana and Michigan to use as a Native buffer state between the United States and Canada, an idea which Tecumseh also supported, but the Americans refused. Tecumseh was the subject of many different memorials, the most strange of which being the adoption of his name as a personal name, as in William Tecumseh Sherman, or the names of towns in the U.S. and Canada, Mount Tecumseh in New Hampshire, four U.S. Navy ships, a military barracks in Canada, jut to name a few. The Shawnee Nation struck a dollar coin bearing his likeness. Tecumseh Court at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis bears his name and there are memorials in both the U.S. and Canada, where he is equally regarded as a hero. Numerous engravings and pictures exist claiming to portray Tecumseh, though none is known to have been drawn from life. Likewise, he's been the subject of many sculptures and statues. An outdoor play, Tecumseh, is produced in Chillicothe, Ohio, which takes pride in being his birthplace. Jesse Borrego and Michael Greyeyes have both portrayed Tecumseh on screen.
No comments:
Post a Comment